CONWAY—Challenge Week 2013 convenes October 25-30 as a community-wide conversation on the state of civil rights in Arkansas for female, African-American, and gay citizens.

Minnijean Brown-Trickey of the Little Rock Nine, Lecia Brooks of the Southern Poverty Law Center and former Arkansas State Representative Linda Tyler are the featured speakers for the week.

The Norbert O. Schedler Honors College hosts the campus- and community-wide conversation annually about a topic of current and lasting significance, inviting national, regional, and local speakers to address aspects of the topic in a week-long series of events.

“In January, President Obama historically linked ‘Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall,’ drawing a parallel between the three great rights struggles of American history: women’s rights, civil rights, and gay rights. Challenge Week 2013 explores the legacy of these struggles in Arkansas,” said Donna Bowman, associate dean of the Schedler Honors College Associate Dean, for more information.

The keynote address will be the Farris Lecture at in the College of Business Auditorium at 7 p.m. Tuesday, October 29, given by Brown-Trickey. Her talk, entitled “Return To Little Rock,” will reflect on her own involvement in the iconic struggle for African-American equality and the progress that Arkansas has made since the galvanizing Central High School crisis.

Other major events include a presentation by Lecia Brooks, outreach director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, on the state of gay rights; a panel discussion on the state of women’s rights, featuring Representative Tyler along with UCA faculty, and moderated by the director of UCA’s Gender Studies program, Taine Duncan; and a presentation by Honors students involved in the study of civil rights movements this semester.